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China Ends One-Child Policy
jones_supa writes: China has scrapped its one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children for the first time since draconian family planning rules were introduced in 1979. The announcement followed a four-day Communist Party summit in Beijing where China's top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of heightened concerns over the economy. China will "fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an ageing population," the party said in a statement published by Xinhua.
Now just uncensored the internet and you'll earn a bit of respect in the world.
Now that the Chinese can counterfeit even rice, why the fuck not??
People in the west don't understand that for most Chinese, the one child policy doesn't have effect. Because there are so many exceptions.
1) If you and your partner were single kids, you can have two kids.
2) Ethnic minorities have higher limits, and foreigners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan can have unlimited
3) Rich people just pay the tax and have another child, because they are so rich from corruption money is nothing for them.
4) Some provinces had already lifted the ban, or lessened it greatly.
5) Children born outside China, including HK and Taiwan, don't count. Hence the large amount of birth tourism.
So this is pretty much a symbolic act, but at least it's the communists admitting they can't control everything. I wonder how this will be spun off in China, since there the communists are still treated as nearly perfect, the thing everyone should aspire to be.
So the solution to having to many people is to make more people? Got it.
So in other words, 10 billion humans in 5 years?
We have a lot of old people so need even more young people in the hope that some will look after them. ANother generation down the line - those young people become an even bigger population of old people. Rinse and repeat until the human population size causes complete eco collapse.
Whats the solution? Wish I knew.
They haven't ended the policy. They've changed it to a two child policy.
They've still got their hands in things they have no business being in.
China needs more cheap labor, increasing the population will ensure that
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
With a new middle-class generation it's about the right time to change or be rid of the policy altogether, as that range of "overproduction" typically found in impoverishment and agrarian/low-skilled working conditions is being surpassed. The policy worked only too well considering they're projected to have difficulty supporting an enormous aging population with much fewer offspring, mostly male at that. So that will be the hurdle.
It's true the population is still growing, but at a much more diminished rate per capita. Eventually (like, 80-100 years from now) it will be in decline much the way Japan's is if immigration policy is kept intact. And that's ok. You don't NEED a perpetually growing population to be prosperous. Growth does help skyrocket GDP but once the country is in a comfortable stage it seems redundant, unnecessary.
...being Middle Class, it will be even harder for their urban populations to even want to have children, period.
Chinas economy and society exploded in a mass rush to bring its populations out of an agrarian based society into the 21st century in a single generation. They have come close to achieving that, however, those millions(billions?) now experiencing their "first taste of the First World", the Chinese middle class, with their new found luxury goods, cars, etc; will start to behave more like those in other First World countries like Japan, the US and Europe.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Instead of in our Coke.
Do you honestly not know the difference between someone volunteering for something and it being forced on them, or are you just being a tool?
How will the past one child policy affect China's foreign policy? If a family only has only one child how ready are they to risk that child in a war? Are the parents who have only one child now of an age where they can affect national policy or are the present policy makers of a generation that was still able to have more than one and therefore more open to this risk? If there is an affect how will relaxing this policy affect China's foreign policy?
And how do you want to enforce the policy? Kill the child after birth? Punish the parents as to make sure that they can't raise the child correctly?
This is not a subject one can really talk about without emotional responders flipping out.
We have eaten most of the big fish in the sea.
We are creating dead spots in the ocean with the runoff of the fertilizer which is required to grow the land crops at the level we grow them.
Just about all the land which can be farmed is farmed and an awful lot which shouldn't be farmed is too (Hi California desert!).
The emotional responders and breeders will say "the world can never be over populated" but it is already.
The world needs a 1 child (female preferred) per family policy. It needs the policy because your average person is not responsible enough to control their reproduction on their own as they demonstrate every day. I say female preferred because they eat less, are less crime/violence oriented, and if something goes wrong, a mostly female population can bounce back very quickly. And because if left to their own your average humans want boys which china will tell you has been a problem.
Yeah more babies! I want baby! Baby, baby, baby!!! is not the proper response to this news.
And now time for me to get modded down
People in the west don't understand that for most Chinese, the one child policy doesn't have effect. Because there are so many exceptions.
1) If you and your partner were single kids, you can have two kids.
2) Ethnic minorities have higher limits, and foreigners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan can have unlimited
3) Rich people just pay the tax and have another child, because they are so rich from corruption money is nothing for them.
4) Some provinces had already lifted the ban, or lessened it greatly.
5) Children born outside China, including HK and Taiwan, don't count. Hence the large amount of birth tourism.
So this is pretty much a symbolic act, but at least it's the communists admitting they can't control everything. I wonder how this will be spun off in China, since there the communists are still treated as nearly perfect, the thing everyone should aspire to be.
According to China's Health Ministry, the one child policy had forced 336 million abortions as of 2013. It also had forced the sterilization of 196 million men and women.
In the grand scheme of things, this is something it's worth making a big deal about. Certainly more worthy of a mention than female stereotypes in media and other injustices against women that get a lot more coverage. But yeah, they've been relaxing the restrictions for awhile now.
But the demographic that came off worst was men.
Guess the aging party leaders wanted more child brides
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There are over 7 billion people on the planet. We should be working to reduce this number.
China has also been doing everything it can to convert most of its population into at least middle class consumers of domestic products. There are huge shifts going on now -- rural people are being picked up and moved to cities to increase efficiency of delivering services to them. Infrastructure projects are being undertaken to basically force-build a consumer society, kind of the same way the Soviets forced industrialization on a largely agrarian society in the early 20th Century.
In my opinion, this is why China will take over the top spots from the US and European countries in the future. I know we said the Japanese were going to take over the US in the 80s, but their culture is pretty insular compared to China's. The reason they'll succeed, besides sheer numbers, will be their ability to control things centrally while maintaining a mostly market economy. Things just get done in China; there's no debates, no government shutdowns, nothing. It's not great from a human rights perspective, but it's a perfect combination for building a robust economy. When you can do what needs to be done without having to take every single special interest in mind, decision making is faster and central planning succeeds.
Meh, the 'invisible hand of nature' will regulate the population. Either China (and the rest of the collective globe) will get control of its population growth, or they will spew vast amounts of Co2 as a result of existing in a modern society and the Earth will heat up and kill off vast numbers of people. I don't see 20 billion people living in a carbon neutral fashion any time soon.
Nature will find a level.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Well, they do have all those islands now to put them on...
Europe's birth rate, is in negative territory, same with the USA, England, and pretty much EVERY country in the world...WITH THE EXCEPTION of those from the middle east. The Islamic/Muslim population is EXPLODING. And they are exporting millions to Europe, USA, Canada, and other countries. As those populations continue to explode (and the "leaders" of their race/religion have told them, it is their DUTY to multiply) in a generation, the Islamic/Muslim religion/population will be the majority of the worlds people, allowing them to "conquer" the world by shear numbers. China obviously sees that, or they would continue to keep their population down.
In fact the one child policy was intended to create gradual drop. Because of the large number of young people already born 30 years ago, who may just now be having their first child, while they and their parents are still alive, the population is still growing, and will continue to grow for many more years. If I recall correctly, the most optimistic projections, assuming widespread and nearly perfect compliance with one child per mother, had the population leveling off in about the year 2050/
I think you are the one failing to fully think through the math as it applies to this issue. It takes decades for a reduction in birthrate to cause an actual drop in population. Age of first birth and number of births per woman both have an effect, but given that at any given time there are 3-5 generations of people alive, a drop in the birthrate among young females only slows the rate of growth a little at first. When their children in turn start to have children, if that generation maintains a low birthrate, the rate of grown will decline more - but will still probably be a positive absolute increase. Going out to the grandchild generation, if that third generation maintains a low birthrate, the population will actually start to shrink, as the grandparents and great grandparents start to die at a rate that is higher than the birthrate.
When the policy was first announced, the overpopulationist big mouths screamed "success"
Now they're silent ;)
I wager there will be no population explosion in China. Why? Because aside from the fact that the policy wasn't being enforced, the natural rate of replacement had already declined. China emptied out its countryside, moved people into cities, and got them on the consumer bandwagon. Now the couples who used to marry young and crank out kids will "wait until we can afford a better place, and have the means to send our children to school". In other words, they've changed from the 3rd world style economy to an industrial/technical economy where the economic incentive to crank out kids isn't there.
They shot their mouths off saying they're not afraid of war with the US but are building up bulletbags to use. Wake up people.
They need more cheap labor to keep their economy going and to fill up all those buildings they built. Not to mention all the extra organs they get to harvest when the children are ripe.
Bread and Circuses: Roman
Bread and Circuses and Sex: US/EU
Bread and Circuses and Sex and Children: CHINDIA
Casteism
The solution is to either increase automation so that old people don't need to be supported by able-bodied young people or fix genetically the symptoms of aging so people can remain able-bodied, if not young-looking, until the day they decide to die.